Bob Suhrhoff, retired NYPD officer and Patchogue resident, dies at 70

In his many and varied careers and avocations, Patchogue’s Bob Suhrhoff was an Air Force service member, an ironworker, an NYPD officer at 9/11 and a home chef with a culinary school degree. But the true measure of the man, said one lifelong friend, took place in bars.

"If we were sitting in the bar and everybody would do a pool to get into the lottery, who holds the money? Bobby holds the money, since everybody trusted him. That's just his reputation," recalled Mark DeGasperi, of East Patchogue, a friend since childhood. "That man is trustworthy, no arguments. ... He always did the right thing."

And in ways big and small. "You could call him for help with anything," said his sister Gail Suhrhoff, of North Carolina. "You get a flat tire at night, you could call him to come help you."

And if you were a niece estranged from her father, "He was more in my life than my dad was," said Dana Ginas, also of North Carolina. "He took me to my first movie. He gave me away at my wedding."

Bob Suhrhoff died of prostate cancer at his home on Oct. 25. He was 70.

"He was modest and quiet," remembered another sister, Luanne Bailey, of California. "He was not one to be telling stories and stuff like that." But he wasn’t shy, she said: As a police officer, his Midtown South precinct included Broadway and Madison Square Garden, "and has all these pictures of himself with [the New York Knicks’] Patrick Ewing and [actor] Liam Neeson and Rick Pitino," the Bayville-raised former coach of the Knicks.

Robert Richard Suhrhoff was born on July 25, 1955, in upstate Kingston, the fifth of seven children of insurance broker and regional executive Louis Aloyius Suhrhoff and Cecilia Julia Rider Suhrhoff, who used her Catholic confirmation name, Claire, as her middle name most of her life.

The family moved to Hicksville by decade’s end, and afterward to North Patchogue. Bob Suhrhoff attended Patchogue High School until it split into two schools and graduated in 1973 from Patchogue-Medford High School, in Medford.

He joined the Air Force, training in flight-facilities equipment repair. Honorably discharged in 1979, he continued in the Air Force National Guard for the next several years while working regular jobs. Posted primarily to Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach, he rose to staff sergeant and received an Air Force Achievement Medal in 1996 and again in 2000.

After a stint as an ironworker, Suhrhoff worked as a laborer helping to build his friend DeGasperi’s Cavalier Athletic Club in Patchogue. During this time, DeGasperi said, "He got called to the [police] academy." During his 20 years on the force, his family said, he was among the first responders to the World Trade Center terror attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Suhrhoff retired in the mid-2000s and spent his remaining years indulging such pursuits as golfing, deep-sea fishing, travel — including a cruise to South America with a group of friends — and, especially, cooking, for which he obtained a degree from the now-defunct Culinary Academy of Long Island in Syosset.

"He tried really interesting recipes and he always had a lot of gadgets," Ginas remembered. "He always used a French technique, mise en place, which means you measure all the ingredients and put everything out in little bowls before you start." Even while he was undergoing chemotherapy, she said, "He made me this elaborate scallop dish with rice and vegetables."

A member of the Bellport Country Club, he also belonged to the veterans organization AMVETS and to NYPD 10-13, a group for active and retired police officers. He never married.

In addition to his sisters and his niece, he is survived by brothers Thomas, of Louisiana; John, of California; and William, of Virginia. Another brother, James, died in 1989.

Visitation took place Friday at Robertaccio Funeral Home in Patchogue, with a religious service there that afternoon and an AMVETS service that evening. Following a closing prayer Saturday morning, he was buried with military honors at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram. A celebration of life was held at the Dunton Inn in East Patchogue on Saturday.